Hi James,

>Having the benefit of working with both platforms, I see some definate advantages to using .NET in certain situations. I won't abandon Fox either, which is why I needed to throw this hornet's nest at Kevin to begin with.

Can you outline in what solutions .NET has advantages over VFP ? Sure, if it comes to Internet I can see it also. But in what situations besides internet operations does it have advantages ?

>The difference between VB6 and VFP was very clear, but those lines are a bit muddy with .NET. The fact that .NET does not ship with a local database engine is not such a big deal when you consider how easily it integrates with SQL Server.

For a true data driven application this is a big deal IMO. Processing meta data and intermediate results are truly a breeze in VFP. In .NET you'll have to use the SQL server for that. For example for reporting I just get the data I need from the SQL server and process that into reports and meta data on the VFP side. I don't want to burden the SQL server with doing that, nor do I want to have extra network trafic because the SQL server has to handle meta data etc.

I'm a big believer in data driven application where lots of meta data is used to drive the application for:

- Menu structures
- Multilanguage
- Application security
- Module enabling/Disabling
- Smart algorithms that use cursors for temp storage of (META) data for performance.

Also:
- Loading fairly static data into the application ones and use that during the use of the application
- Easy manipulation of off line datasets for easy views or reporting purposes.

Things that to me are so invaluable that I will feel crippled in .NET with the absense of a local data engine. Don't get me wrong, though I'm not an expert in .NET I do know these things are not impossible, but they certainly are harder to do and most of the time a hell lot slower than within VFP. I think part of the problem is that some people do not see the huge value of data driven applications.

Walter,